This topic can add any extracts/quotes from teachers who talk about daily life development of samatha and vipassana.
And of course comments, and agreement or disagreement, on what they write is welcome.
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Snow in the Summer
by Ven. Sayadaw U Jotika
Meditation, as it’s been taught to and practised by many people, has its lim-
its. That’s because they don’t understand it properly and they are trying to do it
as if it is something apart from their life.
Real mindfulness meditation is all-inclusive. No part of our mental and physical
life should be left out of our mindfulness. Every aspect of our life should be well
understood.
Real practice is natural, moving, living, limitless, should be practised every-
where, every time. A specialised and fragmented approach is unacceptable for
me. I am beginning to feel that a specialised, standardised approach is harmful.
(I have never been able to force, restrict myself to do that). For me meditation is
not something special.
[..]Non-doing is not easy. If you try to do non-doing, then you are doing. If you
try to accomplish something, you are doing. And your ego is strong. If you don’t
do anything then you become meaningless and empty.
[..]Understanding comes to those who are not in a hurry to understand. Under-
standing is like a fruit tree; it takes time to become mature. One cannot force it
to bear fruits.
[..]
If you watch
your mind really closely without wanting to be different, it will resolve your
knots, but don’t watch your mind only in order to resolve your knots. That will
cause a conflict. See anattā (no-self) in your mind.
[..]
Walk more and be mindful. The more you think of how to improve your
situation the more unhappy you become. Always planning for the future — “I
will be happy if I live in a good place.” Always: “I will be happy if…”. Never, “I
am happy…”. Enough planning, improving.‘Becoming’ is so predominant in our life. We don’t see that there is no ‘being’.
How can there be ‘becoming’ without ‘being’? Just see what is happening at this
moment without any motive to improve it.I understand your struggle and pain. I know you are trying your best to be a
good disciple of the Buddha. It is hard. It is not even easy to keep the five
precepts. Yes, some people think sotāpatti maggaphala (the path and the fruit
of streamwinning) is nothing. They don’t understand how extraordinary it is
not to have (to be rid of) wrong views; to overcome rites and rituals (supersti-
tions). To come to see clearly that dhamma practice is the only way that could
lead to liberation, happiness. They don’t know what an extraordinary thing it is
not to have any envy (jealousy); to rejoice in other people’s prosperity; to share
whatever you have with others; and to have overcome all the doubts about
one’s practice (whether it is the right way or not).
Snow in the Summer
by Ven. Sayadaw U Jotika
Please don’t condemn greed, pride, anger, and so on. You can learn quite a
lot from them. You cannot grow up unless you know about them very well. Only
when you can see them with a clear mind can you learn about their true nature,
especially their anattā-ness (selflessness).The first and most important step in meditation is non-identification with
mental (nāma) and physical (rūpa) phenomena. It is not overcoming anything
except overcoming identification with the nāmarūpa process. Why do people
get upset? Because they identify with nāmarūpa. So, when there is greed, lust,
attachment or frustration, anger or pride, etc., the most important point is to
see them as a natural phenomenon without taking them as something personal.
Don’t try to overcome them. Being upset is another ego trip. Is there a person
(attā) who is upset? Being upset is just another natural phenomenon.
If you are
upset because you enjoy music, you are being too demanding, you are asking
(expecting) too much. But if you see the enjoying mind and watch it with equa-
nimity, only then will you see it for what it is. Being upset (which is dosa) is a
close companion of greed and pride. Because you think: I am a meditator so
there shouldn’t be greed or pride arising in my mind, you get upset. When there
is greed or enjoyment of any kind, say instead: Please stay and let me study you.
They are really wonderful. Greed is the greatest magician. Learn (see) the way
it conjures up pleasant feelings. The mind gets so tricked by greed that we don’t
see it as a magician, we see it as me.
Snow in the Summer
by Ven. Sayadaw U Jotika
I used to feel bad (ashamed) about having faults (not being perfect). In some
cases, it is other people’s unrealistic expectations projected onto me; and un-
knowingly I slip into the role they expect of me. It is impossible; it is even
dangerous; it makes me feel inadequate. But now I have learnt to be myself.Please be mindful even though it is hard sometimes. When you think it is impos-
sible to be mindful, that is the time when it is most important to be mindful.It is more important to meditate when you are restless. When you think it is
impossible for you to meditate because your mind is crazy — that is the most
important time for you to meditate.In the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the Buddha said: “Vikkhittaṃ vā cittaṃ
vikkhittaṃ cittaṃ pajānāti.” (When the mind is restless, one knows that the
mind is restless.) You are not expected to do more than that.The Buddha did not say you should feel guilty for being greedy or angry. You
know what’s happening. Don’t deceive yourself. That’s all you can do. So, be
mindful but don’t beat yourself up. Acceptance and honesty is the most impor-
tant thing.Just knowing the states that the mind is in would be enough. If you try to do
anything more than that, you’ll end up being even more frustrated. There is no
control, and that means anattā. Sarāgaṃ vā cittaṃ sarāgaṃ cittanti pajānāti.
(When the mind is lustful, one knows that the mind is lustful.)… Pajānāti (to
know clearly); that’s all, not more than that. To have a calm and peaceful mind
all the time is impossible for someone who is in contact with so many people
every day.I know how reading some dhamma books and/or listening to some dhamma
tapes can make one feel guilty. The ideal is too high. We cannot reach it. We
don’t need to feel guilty about enjoying sense pleasures as long as we don’t
harm anyone. See what enjoyment of sense pleasure is.Sukhaṃ vā vedanaṃ vedayamāno sukhaṃ vedanaṃ vedayāmī pajānāti.
(While enjoying pleasant sensations one knows that I enjoy pleasant sensations.)
Where does guilt come in? Who taught us to feel guilty whenever we enjoy our
life? Enough!
[..]
Look at your mind as mind, not as ‘my mind’. Whether it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ see
that as anattā; see that it arises because it has sufficient conditions to arise, not
arising on its own. Not a being, not me, not mine. Kilesas (defilements) are very
interesting.Expectation is the source of disappointment. In itself, it even makes the mind
restless.
Sometimes, I think that having an ideal of calmness, peacefulness and cheer-
fulness makes a person even more frustrated.
[..]
My point is, sometimes I am really in despair. Sometimes I feel really burnt
out. Then I get down to the basics and simple things, and try to look at life
afresh without any preconceived value judgment. In those detached, peaceful,
clear moments, nothing seems to be very important. Only a few fundamental
truths appear very clearly, such as anicca (impermanence), anattā (egolessness),
craving (desire, attachment, clinging), and suffering (unsatisfactoriness, pain
— mental and physical), lobha (greed), dosa (aversion), and moha (delusion).
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Snow in the summer. An old school free distribution book, maybe before the internet was born. Ven Jotika grew up Christian in Myanmar, and then converted to Buddhism and ordained. His parents were not happy about that. It is a good read if you have not read it before.
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It’s not just by sitting with your eyes closed that you develop wisdom. Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind are constantly with us…
— Ajahn Chah
I’m not sure where or if this is said anywhere.. but I have yet to see any instructions that say the eyes should be closed.
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U Tejaniya:
Destined to Teach
Āyasmā Kumara interviews Sayadaw U Tejaniya
I’d like to point out
is that there can actually be wrong
concentration, which has nothing to
do with samatha or vipassanā,
because both of these have right
concentration. Wrong concentration
happens to a lot of yogis. They use
too much energy to focus because of
greed, because they are trying to get
something; so they develop this
heavy concentration. That can be
dangerous. Because it’s wrong
concentration, of course it’s
dangerous. The motivation behind
that kind of concentration is greed
actually. They want something so
badly they use a lot of energy to
focus, thinking that’s how they’ll
get it, and sometimes that energy
builds up to a level that they
themselves cannot control. That’s
because there is a combination of
the power of focusing and the
power of the defilements. So it is
really very out of control. Double
trouble.
Also (some) yogis have this
misconception: When they talk
about “strong mindfulness”, they
think it’s when they use a lot of
energy to focus, to pay attention.
The whole point of that book,
Awareness Alone is Not Enough, is toexplain wisdom. It’s in a question-
and-answer format. (Translator:Most of the book.) It’s about the
importance of discussion and how it
can help us understand more and
get more information, more data.
From AWARENESS ALONE
IS NOT ENOUGH
Insights can arise under very ordinary
circumstances. The object of your observation
can be a very simple and straightforward one,
but the insight can be very deep, a world apart
from the simplicity of the experience.
I had fun at his place. His books should be read in order.
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The Wise Investigator
Sayadaw U Tejaniya
The mind wanders—can’t labeling bring you back to yourself? You don’t have to use a conscious label. The mind knows what it’s thinking, the mind has already recognized its thinking by the time you label it. And there’s a risk. For example, if we label “pain, pain, pain,” it can get worse because the mind knows the meaning of the words it uses. It can reinforce pain. The point is not to change states, just to know them as they are. I would also like to add that we say the mind “wanders,” but in fact it doesn’t go anywhere. Thoughts arise, that’s all. The only problem is that we think they shouldn’t!
For Vipassana practice, sitting is not necessary. The purpose of practicing Vipassana is to cultivate wisdom.
To what end? We cultivate wisdom to understand, to see clearly, to know. You don’t remove the defilements; wisdom does.
You had a very full life as a layperson. Why did you become a monk? What motivated you? I chose to because I can practice full-time as a monk.
As a layperson, we can’t do this full-time? After all, you say we can practice in any situation. You can; it depends on the individual. It’s a little different, and you have to give it a lot of time.
Is it easier as a monk to practice full-time? [Laughs.] Actually, I can’t say being a monk makes it easier to meditate. Being able to meditate has nothing to do with being a monk or a layperson. I chose to ordain because I wanted to become a monk. Becoming a monk did not do anything to help my practice, nor was being a layperson detrimental to my practice.
good to know.
Meditating While Thinking - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review u tejaniya
When we meditate, do we think it is good to have a lot of thoughts in the mind? Or do we think it is better to have only a few thoughts, or even no thoughts in the mind?
If we believe it’s better to have few or no thoughts in the mind, then we are likely to resist thinking whenever thoughts arise in the mind.
But thinking is just nature. Can we stop nature or avoid nature? It’s impossible. Instead we merely need to see that thinking is nature. That is right view. With this view we can start to skillfully live with thinking instead of resisting the nature that is thinking.
You need to be able to recognize when the mind is thinking, but not get entangled in what is being thought. There is no need to get caught in the story your thoughts are telling. There is no need to automatically believe that the story running in the mind is true.
Rather, be interested in the fact that the mind is thinking. It’s a process that is happening. If you are not used to acknowledging that the mind is thinking, go back to whatever else you were being aware of, such as the breath or sensations in the body. Don’t stay just with the mind, because you can then get lost in thought.
If you frequently give yourself the opportunity to acknowledge the thinking mind, you will get to the point where you begin to see that this is mind. Then you can know it and not get lost in thought. There is a difference between being lost in thought, and being aware of thinking while thinking.
We begin to recognize that we can objectively know “this is mind.” We realize “this is mind, mind is thinking.” Once we learn how to see the mind objectively in this way, then we don’t get lost in thought.
When the mind is thinking continuously and we become aware of it, it’s not enough to just know the mind is thinking. We can notice the intention to think. The mind wants to think. We want to become able to see this desire clearly. Sometimes when we ask ourselves, “Why is my mind thinking so much?” we are able to detect the desire to think.
Once a meditator was watching her mind thinking and she asked herself this question: “Why is the mind thinking so much?” She suddenly realized it was because the mind wanted to entertain itself. Once we know the cause of so much thinking, that knowledge will slow or stop it.
When we look at thoughts in this way, we become able to understand certain processes such as cause-and-effect relationships between the mind and body, or how the mind labels “right and wrong.” We’re not interested in the content of the thoughts. We want to understand the phenomenon of thinking, especially in relation to the unskillful qualities of wanting certain things to happen (for example, wanting certain kinds of thoughts or images to arise in the mind) and other things not to happen (such as certain thoughts we don’t want to arise).
We can observe these processes clearly in relation to sounds we hear during meditation. See how the mind immediately labels such sounds as “good” or “bad.” We enjoy “good” sounds that we hear, such as the sounds of bells chiming, birds singing, or leaves rustling in the wind, and we grasp at them in the mind. We like them and want to experience them more. We don’t want them to stop. Likewise, we try to block out the “bad” sounds we hear, such as car traffic or construction noise.
It doesn’t matter how well you are concentrating. You could be in the depths of concentration, but when you hear a sound and you think it shouldn’t be there, you lose concentration instantly. You resent that the sound broke your concentration.
The moment we have wrong view, we have wrong thought, which is a thought of liking or disliking, or of evaluating an experience as good or bad. Then, instead of continuing to see reality clearly, we get entangled in desire and aversion. We start trying to manipulate nature instead of seeing it clearly and working with it skillfully.
In this way, our likes and dislikes thus cloud the clarity of the mind, but this is actually an opportunity to observe and learn in detail how the unwholesome roots do their work. To the degree we can understand them, to that same degree the mind is freed from desire, aversion, and delusion.
How about pain? Can we observe how the mind tends to automatically label any intensely unpleasant sensation as “pain” and therefore as “bad”?
We generally judge pain as a negative experience. The word itself feeds that image into our mind, so when we have pain, the mind’s automatic reaction, whether we are conscious of it or not, is to dislike it. When we come across discomfort in the body or the mind, we need to see this negative reaction clearly in the mind and to adjust it by bringing in right view.
We do this by reminding ourselves that pain is not inherently a negative experience. Pain is nature. It is neither good nor bad.
Only when we accept that pain is nature can we allow it and learn from it. Otherwise, we are so busy resisting pain that we can’t understand anything about it.
When there is pain, pain is just a physical experience, right? But the feeling “painful” is in the mind. For the same physical experience, there may be aversion in the mind toward it, or the mind may be equanimous toward it. So we need to work with the mind to understand more about its involvement in the process.
How does the mind interpret pain? How does the mind create pain for itself? How does it create the experience of “pain,” “painfulness,” and all the attendant pains for itself? For a non-meditator, it’s all together, all rolled up in one. But for a meditator, it’s different; you take it apart to find out more about it.
People with chronic pain have to learn on the go. What is the mind’s feeling toward the pain? What is the mind’s attitude toward the pain? What stance does it hold toward the pain? What do you already understand about the pain?
By inquiring about pain in this way, the mind learns how to understand pain with right view, not personally as “my pain,” but just as nature. When it’s not understood as my pain, it suddenly doesn’t hurt so much, or even at all.
Without aversion, pain is just another object to be known. It is impersonal. It doesn’t matter that the object happens to be pain. When pain becomes just nature, then it is no longer painful.
As you go about meditating the whole day, remember that whatever you observe, whether it’s in the body or the mind, whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant, it’s helpful to hold the view that “this is just nature, this is just a process.” This is the only difference between someone who is meditating and someone who is not meditating.